Monday Matters: Junior League of Fort Smith making a difference

Community impact is the name of the game for the Junior League of Fort Smith.

The organization is 100-women strong and is dedicated to developing the potential of women, encouraging volunteerism and improving leadership skills.

JLFS originally focused its projects to help women and children in the community. The service league began in the 1960s and was a way for women at the time to do something outside of the home.

But when recently challenged by the Association of Junior Leagues International Inc. to find a more specific group on which to focus its attention, JLFS decided to focus on foster children, especially those aging out of the system with no help. Currently, Sebastian County leads the state in the number of children in foster care.

Now, all of JLFS's community impact projects directly focus on taking care of local youth and foster care.

“We felt like we could make the biggest difference there,” said Lindsey Robinson, president of the Junior League in Fort Smith.

Sunday, JLFS will sponsor its annual Holiday Home Tour, when attendees will get a chance to visit five local homes that are decorated for the holidays. About 300 are expected to attend.

“The Holiday Home Tour is currently our longest running fundraiser, and is a great way to get in the holiday spirit while helping the community," Robinson said. "All proceeds go to benefit local youth in foster care in some way, whether it be helping those aging out to learn life skills, or providing their foster parents with critical training to maintain their certification."

Community impact projects have long been a part of the Junior League, including the Holiday Market, which brings in vendors from around the country and allows people to shop for the holidays.

“It’s a big shopping event for locals that would buy their ticket to shop and make a difference by doing so,” said Robinson.

JLFS offers six impact projects, aimed primarily at children in foster care.

Foster Parent Night Out is an event held three times a year. Foster parents will come in to get credit hours, which help in the certification process of becoming foster parents. They will do gift drives, provide child care and dinner and invite a guest speaker to come.

Skills for Life is a program for children aging out of the foster care program. It is a curriculum-based monthly class covering focused on life skills. Classes include how to buy a car, how to get insurance and even how to do laundry.

“We wanted to teach them skills you just might not get in a group home setting,” said Robinson.

One of the most popular programs is called Independent City. Comparable with a “big game of the board game Life,” according to Robinson, the children are put in a city and given a chance to see how dollars are spent and how far dollars can stretch, when they wouldn’t necessarily get the chance to see otherwise. This program was so popular that it was shared with other leagues because of how much recognition it had gained.

Other programs like the Children’s Emergency Shelter involve taking local youth in poor situations out about twice a month to mentor and support them. A program called Done-In-A-Day is a project in which community members can propose projects that can be done in a day based on needs they see throughout the city. To get a project approved, it must go through an application process. Anybody can come up with a proposal; it just all depends on budget.

Project Adoption Picnic was a giant, Done-In-A Day, success, Robinson said. Children eligible for adoption and parents looking to adopt are brought together at a picnic to see if they can find a connection.

The last main project is Project G.E.M — Girls’ Education and Mentoring. Once a month, JLFS partners with Girls Inc. and holds classes over health and wellness, career choices and volunteering.

Their main goal?

“We want to impact the community,” said Robinson. “They think that we’re just doing this for us, but it’s not, it’s for the community.”

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